Last month we said goodbye to Amelia Griffiths, one of our pioneering female Young Leaders, as she moved away from Selby ahead of starting university in September. Before she tackles her all-important A-levels and begins the next chapter of her life, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate everything she brought to Vale of York Athletic Community.
Author Archives: Ian Martin
03
May
May
One week ago I crossed the London Marathon finish line. In the lead-up to the race I was in two minds: target a sub-3, or settle for a Good for Age. At 59, the M55 GFA standard is 3:12, so anything under 3:10 would hopefully secure my place for next year.
By race morning I’d made my decision: focus on the GFA. It came down to four factors:
A holiday in Madeira two weeks before the race where I’d done next to nothing. I felt stiff on my return, particularly in my left calf, and I couldn’t fully shake it.
It was a fairly warm day. I’m a bigger runner at just under 80 kg, and I knew this probably wasn’t going to be the day for a big sub-3 effort.
Starting at the back of Wave 3 in a very crowded field.
Most importantly, what would a sub-3 at 59 actually mean to me? There are far fewer runners doing this in the M60 age category and it would make for a better, more meaningful challenge to save myself this year and go for it properly next year.
So I ran London as a hard tr
03
Apr
Apr
Some of you will know Will Haw. He’s our 800m specialist who headed out to Michigan last year on an athletics scholarship at Northwood University, competing in one of the toughest NCAA Division II conferences in the country. He’s just wrapped up his first ever indoor track season, and has provided us with this update.
His headline number for the 800 is 1:52. He ran it five times indoors this season and Will says he’s happy with it. Though Will being Will, he’d have liked to go a bit faster.
31
Mar
Mar
Some athletes have a breakthrough season. Katie Adams is having a breakthrough two months.
Since the start of February 2026, the University of York Social Work student and Vale of York athlete has lined up for three 3000 metre races and raced faster in every single one.
28
Mar
Mar
During March, as part of my 2026 miles in 2026 project, I took in two races. Two very hilly races, and important milestones on my road to the London Marathon on 26 April.
The first was the Liversedge Half Marathon on 1 March, which also happened to be my 59th birthday. A birthday treat of 13.1 miles felt about right. The race starts in Roberttown, just up the road from Spen Valley Stadium, Princess Mary Stadium, where we compete for West Yorkshire Track and Field. It was the 30th running of the Liversedge Half and my first time doing it in those 30 years. It had a good community feel about it. Registration was in a village hall, the community had come together to host it, and although the roads weren’t fully closed, there was a closed start before opening out onto a mixture of road, pavement, and the odd grass verge. Challenging terrain, and challenging topology too.
26
Mar
Mar
Vale of York members helped the University of York Athletics and Running Club with a volunteer takeover of York parkrun on 14 March. We filled a number of volunteer roles on the day including pacing.
Pacing is absolutely the key to a good parkrun time. Go out too fast and you’re doomed to underperform. Meter out your resources effectively from the start to the finish line and you’ll stand the best chance of achieving your time goal and fulfilling your running potential.
21
Mar
Mar
Artificial Intelligence (AI) sometimes gets a bad press, but we’ve found it extremely useful for a variety of tasks at our athletics club, Vale of York Athletic Community. Here’s a brief overview of how we’re using it to help plan our FMC (Funetics Multi Challenge) competition on 27 June at the University of York.
Scheduling an event timetable for an athletics meeting can undoubtedly be a complex task. It’s even more challenging if you’ve never done it before, as we hadn’t.
England Athletics provide a helpful club guide including an example timetable for anyone wanting to put on an FMC meet, which covers event sequencing, group sizes and timings. But our specific challenge was adapting EA’s morning timetable to an afternoon slot, with our own particular athlete numbers and group structure.
We fed the EA guidance document and our requirements into Claude, and it produced the Master Timetable for our meet you can see below. A handful of revisions later — mainly adjusting buffer times and the long jump duration whilst compensating for some inconsistencies in the original document — we had a print-ready schedule in a total of fifteen minutes.
08
Mar
Mar
For the last two years, Vale of York has made dressing up for the PECO XC Relays a tradition. Inspired by our University of York members, who have their “challenge week” at the same time as the relays, raising money for their University Athletics and Running Club, fancy dress is just too much fun to miss.
And 2026 proved to be the best for fancy dress participation we’ve ever had.
Standout costume this year had to be Bananaman, A.K.A James Leadbeater. His full length costume as the 1980s TV cartoon superhero, was accompanied by three giant size bananas (Sarah, Beverley and Steve) for good measure.
04
Mar
Mar
At Vale of York, we like to encourage all our young athletes to perform at the best of their abilities. We’ve seen league wins, national qualifiers, personal bests and solid commitment from children across all age groups. But medals and times are not the measure that matters most to us.
Athletics is a long-term development sport.
Children develop at different rates, and while some mature early and look physically dominant at twelve or thirteen, others develop later and quietly catch up. Some balance athletics with football, hockey or other sports. Others just enjoy turning up once a week to work out and be with friends. All of those pathways are valid.
Our responsibility as Vale of York Athletic Community is to protect long-term development, wellbeing and enjoyment so that young people stay in sport for a lifetime.
01
Mar
Mar
Vale of York athlete Henry was awarded his junior parkrun 100 wristband this Sunday by the volunteers at Brayton Academy Junior parkrun.
Now nine years old, Henry has been running junior parkrun since 2021, starting as a four-year-old as soon as Covid restrictions were lifted. Since then, he has turned up regularly on a Sunday morning with his mum, dad and younger brother to complete the 2km run.
His consistency over five years at his age is impressive in itself.